Annabel Lee Shanghai

Concierge.com's insider take:

Annabel Lee's two well-located stores sell elegant, hand-embroidered women's fashions, slippers, purses, and household accessories in delicate fabrics and unfussy colors. The Chinese styles and leitmotifssuch as lotus flowers, dragons, and snuff bottlesallude to 19th-century Shanghai backstreets, though the product quality and consumer appeal is unquestionably 21st-century. The store eloquently portrays how traditional Chinese culture was transformed, but not necessarily destroyed, by the introduction of Western culture in the late 19th century.